Five years after Hurricane Katrina, jazz musician Michael White is back in New Orleans, but his old neighborhood is still mostly empty. In the years since Katrina he’s experienced a personal and musical “rebirth” — another New Orleans tradition.Continue reading →

A worker lays boom beside a fragile Louisiana wetland area early in the Gulf oil disaster on April 29. Photo by Erica Berenstein/AFP/Getty Images City fathers love to talk about the numbers: 78 percent of the population of New Orleans … Continue reading →

Natasha Trethewey has written three collections of poetry: “Domestic Work,” “Bellocq’s Ophelia” and “Native Guard,” which won the “2007 Pulitzer Prize. Her latest book, “Beyond Katrina: A Meditation on the Mississippi Gulf Coast,” is a mix of prose and poetry.Continue reading →

It’s very hard for me to separate my own experiences in the aftermath of Katrina from the flood of other impressions I’ve wallowed in since 2005. I’ve watched HBO’s “Treme” and Spike Lee’s “If God is Willing and Da Creek … Continue reading →

Physical damage from Hurricane Katrina is still evident in New Orleans while the psychological devastation is sometimes harder to detect. Health correspondent Betty Ann Bowser examines the mental impact of two disasters, Katrina and then the Gulf oil disaster, in the Greater New Orleans area. Continue reading →

New floodgates at the 17th Street Canal (Photo by Betty Ann Bowser) On a steamy morning June 2006, less than a year after Hurricane Katrina, I sat in a packed ballroom at a hotel in downtown New Orleans to hear … Continue reading →

The state of the levee system in New Orleans continues to be a major concern, especially during hurricane season. Jeffrey Brown gets two views on the city’s revamped coastal protection system. Continue reading →